Banker connives with 2 others to defraud customers

A staff of an unnamed top bank Bank has been declared wanted by the police for allegedly hacking into the accounts of customers of the bank and diverted over N3 million.

According to CSP Dolapo Badmos, the zone 2 police spokesperson, the bank staff, simply identified as Bunmi, who is at large connived with Babalola Akinyele and Adeshina Adenekan into tricking account owners into releasing their numbers.

She disclosed that the fraud was uncovered after complains were placed by the owners of the accounts about their disappearing funds, which made the bank to institute a probe.

She said, “Between November 2017 and January 2018, the Zone 2 Police Command, through its Zonal Intervention Squad, arrested two suspects who were members of a fraud syndicate. They specialised in hacking into bank accounts.

“One of the suspects, Babalola Akinyele, operated with one Bunmi, a worker at Zenith Bank. Bunmi’s role is to hack into customers’ accounts and transfer money into different bank accounts supplied by Adeshina Adenekan, who thereafter withdraws the money with different Automated Teller Machine cards and returns same to the syndicate.

“Akinyele and Adenekan receive 10 per cent each of the proceeds from Bunmi, the arrowhead of the fraud. They withdrew the money with ATM cards because they did not want to enter into banking halls and be caught. So far, N3m has been traced to them.

“We urge members of the public to be careful and not disclose their Bank Verification Numbers and phone numbers to strangers because these are the things they use to access funds. The case is under investigation and effort is on to arrest the bank worker, who is at large.”

Akinyele, 35, an indigene of Ondo State who claimed to be working for a bet company, said he met Bunmi at a car wash.

He said, “Bunmi helped me to unblock my ATM card. I did not know that he worked in a bank until then. He later said I should get some account numbers for him and I called my friend, Adenekan, to assist me, which he did. Bunmi simply said he wanted to transfer money into the accounts.

“I don’t know how the man used to do it, but whenever he transferred money into the accounts, he would call us and we would use ATM cards to withdraw the money. He took 70 per cent, while we shared 30 per cent.

“Bunmi later called me and said he had left the bank and I should throw away the SIM card we had been using to communicate.”

The second suspect, Adenekan, a land agent, said he had tricked a woman into providing the account numbers used for the fraud.